As the investigation of Bill Clinton goes on, we are being
increasingly
warned against a "rush to judgment" and told to preserve "the
presumption of
innocence."

I do not recall any such warnings in the media back during the
Watergate era.
As more and more information came out suggesting that something illegal
had
been done by President Nixon, people simply said that this information
suggested that something illegal had been done by President Nixon.

We saved "the presumption of innocence" for the courtroom --
which
is where
it belongs. No one said that public discussion and comment should be
silenced
until a court of law reached a verdict. Nor would that have made any
more
sense then than it does now.

In reality, no court of law ever convicted Richard Nixon of
anything. Nor did
Congress impeach him. What drove him from office was precisely the
rising
chorus of outraged opinion that increasingly concluded that he had
committed
illegal acts and lied about them to the public.

It was this public opinion -- not legal proof of anything --
that
made
impeachment virtually inevitable if Nixon had tried to remain in office.
But
none of this would have happened if we had listened to the kind of rush
to
rhetoric that tells us today that we should not "rush to judgment" and
should
preserve "the presumption of innocence."

Should we all have sat still like the monkeys who see no evil,
hear
no evil
and speak no evil?

What is far more scary than anything Bill Clinton has done, or
has
been
accused of doing, is the ease with which rhetoric can distract our
attention
from it and lead us off on a tangent. Three years from now, Clinton will
be
gone but what will be left behind is the knowledge of how easy it is to
get
away with flouting both the laws of the country and the simplest rules
of
common decency, if you know which rhetorical buttons to push and what
words
to
spin.

If Clinton gets away with all this, others will do the same --
or
worse. The
Roman Empire could not survive the constant erosion of its moral
standards
and
neither can we.

A chorus of "So what?" from Congressional Democrats as evidence
of
the
Clintons' shady dealings came out during investigations of Whitewater,
travelgate and filegate got Bill and Hillary through all these scandals.
Sweeping declarations that "everybody does it" allowed others to turn a
blind
eye.

It so happens that everybody does not do it. But, if enough
people
keep
repeating this pat phrase to excuse their own laziness, the time will
surely
come when everybody does do it, because there will be no penalty for
getting
caught -- not even a political penalty of losing public support.

Equally lazy and equally dangerous is the notion that "the
presumption of
innocence" applies outside the courtroom. The standards required to
convict
someone in a court of law have nothing to do with public discussion of
the
weight of evidence.

Even in a court of law, there are different standards for
different
things. A
"preponderance of evidence" is sufficient in a civil case but "beyond a
reasonable doubt" is required in a criminal case. The mere appearance of
a
conflict of interest is enough for a judge to recuse himself from a
particular
case.

Perhaps it is too much to expect, after years of dumbing down in
our
public
schools, that people will think about specific contexts, instead of
mindlessly
repeating rhetoric. The context of a courtroom proceeding is entirely
different from the context in which political judgments are made.

Different contexts mean different standards. Outside the
courtroom,
we are
talking about whether the country or the president should be given the
benefit
of the doubt.

Since the country and its standards are far more important, it
was
right that
Richard Nixon had to resign the highest office in the land, without a
single
thing having been proved against him in a court of law.

Regardless of what does or does not happen to Bill Clinton, we
are
in big
trouble if we allow the spin-masters to confuse us into thinking that no
one
should be punished for what someone else has done before. Everything
from
jay-
walking to genocide has been done before.

We may as well stop punishing anyone for anything if that is our
standard.
Indeed, we would have no reason to vote against anyone who does not come
up
with a sin that is truly original.